Issues with applications after Snow Leopard install

Greetings,

Backstory: About a month ago I realized that I was out of warranty on a Late 2008 Unibody MacBook 13" that I've owned for approximately a year and a couple weeks. Since Apple would not allow me to purchase the extended Applecare warranty, I decided the best option was to sell the laptop and upgrade to a newer one. I sold the laptop within a couple weeks of posting a for sale ad and backed up all my information to an external hard drive using time machine. I did a seven pass secure format on the hard drive before I handed the laptop over to the new owner.

I purchased a new laptop online and received it within a couple days. The laptop came with a 250GB hard drive, so I decided to order and install a 500GB hard drive in it. The installation went smoothly and I installed OSX using the disc that shipped with the laptop. After a successful installation, I migrated all the information from the external hard drive to the new hard drive.

All of the daily applications that I used worked flawlessly. I had a few hiccups with Microsoft Office suite but was able to easily fix the issue by entering my license code.

The other day I decided to use my Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the first time. I clicked on the applications icon to be greeted with a popup that states that my software license has stopped working and that it had expired. Finding it a bit odd since I purchased the software license and it never mentioned anything about an expiration date, I decided to reboot the computer. After the reboot I click on the application again but this time I am greeted with an error code 150. I did a Google search and followed a few of the suggestions to locate a folder and delete the contents of it. Still the issue was not resolved. So I uninstalled the program completely and reinstalled it. Again, same error. I went onto Adobe's support page and found some advice. I downloaded their software removal tool and ran that. After that completed I reinstalled the program. Again same error code. Another site suggested that I complete a script that was a work around for the software license. Despite being a paid license-holder and felt offended that I had to work around Adobe's anti-pirating security, I ran the tool per the instructions on Adobe's website. Again, same error code. I have installed and reinstalled Photoshop to the point where I am about to just give up on it.

But then someone recommended that I do a reinstall of the entire operating system.

So I have a few question regarding the reinstallation:

1. Is there a way to pick and choose what I want to migrate from my HDD backup onto the new installation?
2. Will an installation repair libraries and system folders?
3. Are there any other suggestions to resolve the issue asides from doing a clean reinstall?

Thank You so much for reading and I am looking forward to some advice and suggestions to resolve this issue.

Len

len0475 said:

But then someone recommended that I do a reinstall of the entire operating system.

So I have a few question regarding the reinstallation:

1. Is there a way to pick and choose what I want to migrate from my HDD backup onto the new installation?
2. Will an installation repair libraries and system folders?
3. Are there any other suggestions to resolve the issue asides from doing a clean reinstall?

Thank You so much for reading and I am looking forward to some advice and suggestions to resolve this issue.

Len

Click to expand...

1: Depends. I believe you get categories of items, but you can't select specific items. If you have apps that required an installer, you are generally better off just reinstalling them rather than migrating them.
2: It will erase the old and make new ones.
3: You will probably never see this ever suggested from anyone but me… but… the simplest way to restore your system to a virgin state is to delete /Library and your user Library. On rebooting, OS X will rebuild them from scratch. This is a little on the extreme side of doing things, and certainly don't do so without a backup, but it might save you a lot of trouble. You will lose any plug-ins and the functionality of apps that install support files to the Library, but just reinstall them all. Some things that are stored in your Library like Safari bookmarks you can restore manually from your backup. Honestly, unless you are very comfortable doing something like this and can figure out your way back to restoring any data you need from backups, then I recommend against it.

While it may not help now, here is how i would have handled it. Once i had the new laptop and installed the new OS on the larger HD, i would have then used Migration Assistant to import everything except Applications from the Ext HD. You would have the latest Mac ones having done the install and update sequence, so then download and install the latest 3rd party apps and load Photoshop off the install disc, adding license codes as needed.